The talented pupil and his eternal enemies

Why do we waste our children’s talents?

Every child is talented! Yet we afford ourselves a completely outdated school system that rarely recognises talent and even more rarely nurtures it. The enemies of the talented pupil are all those who are content with the remarkably low standards expected of our schools and who block every reform. They destroy our children’s talents and send many of them out into life without a chance.

This book is completely new, even though it was first published (German) more than ten years ago. Andreas Salcher has revised it from cover to cover. The book exposes the eternal enemies of the talented pupil. And it shows how you can still avoid having the joy of learning spoilt.

With expertise and humour, Andreas Salcher explains how we could turn schools into places where our children learn with joy every day. There is a path from wasted talent to rescued talent. Anyone can become a friend of the talented pupil.

That is the short description of the book on Amazon (German) of “Der talentierte Schüler und seine ewigen Feinde” (The talented pupil and his eternal enemies). The education critic Andreas Salcher began his career as a politician for the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and has been advising large international companies on human resources for 25 years. During his time as pupils’ advocate at the daily newspaper KURIER, he got to know pupils’ needs and worries at first hand, and so he describes them very vividly in his books. His mantra that every pupil has talents worth nurturing is also undoubtedly important and right. When it comes to practical solutions, however, Salcher unfortunately falls seamlessly into line with the chorus of education experts who have been demanding the same things for decades: more money, better teacher training, more early-years support, more school subjects, more teaching materials, more computers, all-day schooling for all, shorter holidays. In doing so, Salcher reinforces the widespread illusion that the school system can be reformed from above by investing even more money and doing even more of the same.

Reality, however, tells a different story:

• Austria already spends 42% more on education than the EU average,
• children are going into childcare ever earlier,
• teacher training has been lengthened,
• the number of all-day schools is rising,
• more and more schools are being equipped with computers, and so on.

The results still leave much to be desired:

• One in five cannot read with understanding after eight years of school,
• 42% do not even meet the minimum requirements in mathematics,
• 24.6% suffer from moderate to severe psychological strain,
• bullying and burnout rates are worryingly high.

Instead of writing about the eternal (?) enemies of the talented pupil and addressing the same old demands to the state, Salcher could have championed the many education initiatives inside and outside the public school system, where children are already growing up today into healthy, creative and self-confident people. Different as they are, they do have a few things in common:

• All of these initiatives come from the grassroots!
• They are all based on the personal commitment of individual parents and teachers,
• they do not orient themselves by standards and rankings,
• but genuinely rely on the children’s self-determination, responsibility and individual development.
• In their founding phase, they all had to overcome bureaucratic hurdles of varying height,
• and most of them have to manage on very little money.

The state jealously guards its monopoly on education and prevents free choice in education by giving private projects little or no funding. Perhaps Salcher’s powerful clients from the business world could change that, if only their attention were finally drawn to these friends of the talented pupil…?

Cover photo by Irina Murza on Unsplash